In our living room we have a basket of books that's still called the library basket even though it contains very few library books. Mostly it's the "what-people-are-reading-this-season" basket, and Stella had been dipping into it for her Marcia Williams fixes.
Today she gasped. "Mama!" she called, in tones that made me think she needed a bandaid. She didn't need first aid, though; she just needed a book that she'd spotted in the "other books by this author" section at the back of her current reading. She needed the other Marcia Williams Shakespeare book, which has been living on the bookshelf and not in the (not-really-the-)library basket. I helped her find it, and she promptly immersed herself. "Oh!" she gasped again, only now she sounded elated rather than wounded. "This is where some of my favorite stories have been!
My 15yo was sitting nearby solving a Rubik's cube. "Which ones are your favorites?" he wanted to know. She flip-flip-flipped through the pages. "This one!" she said, holding up Antony and Cleopatra. She flip-flip-flipped again. "And this one!" she said, turning the book to reveal...Richard III.
"Well," I thought, "my work here is done." And then I thought again: maybe my work here does not consist of teaching my daughter to love the story of an evil shriveled serial murderer. Maybe.
I was cleaning out a tray of abandoned old papers, and at the very bottom I found a list I'd made in early 2011. Stella was newly 2, and I was worried that her language development was a little slow. I'd written down all the words she could say, and set aside my worries when I got to 195. That's on the slow side, but within the normal range.
I looked a little more closely at the list. In the animals category: cow, pig, cat, bunny, pachycephalosaurus, and Cthulhu. (I probably don't need to add that no one outside the family would have recognized either of those last entries. But we knew exactly what she meant.)
Whatever words my children may use down the road to describe their upbringing, I hope "boring" is not among them.
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